I’m back from my vacation in France. I got the inspiration to go when Jason Mraz published his European tour dates with many shows in France where a friend of mine is spending the year as an exchange student. We first bought tickets to the Toulouse show, but when I noticed that Jason had a show in Paris when I was going to be there, I bought a ticket to that as well. Which was a good, because it was such a great show at the Olympia.

All the French people I talked to at the show were wondering if I really came all the way to France just to see the show. Well, I had never been to Paris, so this trip was about so much more than the shows. I love to travel and see live music. Usually, I first book tickets to some shows I want to see, and then plan the trip around them. There’s so much to see in Paris that I didn’t have time to see nearly all the things I wanted to, so I’m glad I’m going back there in the summer to see Dave Matthews Band. For one thing, the weather was so nice all the time that I didn’t go to museums much at all.

Back to music, Marit Larsen opened the Olympia show with a solid set. She was so energetic, so it was funny when Jason’s entrance was like this:

That song is called The Longest Day of the Year. I liked the slow start to the show. With the horn section present and getting lots of space, this show reminded me of Jason’s DVD release Tonight, Not Again: Live at the Eagles Ballroom. They played two of my favorite songs from that release, Common Pleasure and Unfold. This time Jason had no lead guitarist on the stage, so he played the guitar solo in Unfold by himself on the acoustic guitar. He played it quite some time before the sax player took over (it’s all in the YouTube video linked above).

Jason and his super band at the Paris Olympia (Photo by Olivier Colas)

With a saxophone, trumpet and trombone there was no shortage of solo instruments. Even the bass player took a couple of solos. It’s just the kind of music I want to see live with lots of jams and many funny things going on. The audience didn’t know the old songs very well, besides The Remedy. But other than that, the French audience was fantastic at the Olympia!

I thought it was funny when Jason dedicated Love for a Child to his mother. And that day it was his father’s birthday, so we sang happy birthday to him. Really the best part of the show was hit songs like I’m Yours and Dynamo of Volition because the audience was so into them. The biggest highlight was Song for a Friend that closed the show:

I went to the Toulouse show with some exchange students from Bordeaux, another big city in southern France a two-hour train ride away from Toulouse. The show wasn’t literally in Toulouse, but in Ramonville right outside the city. The venue was actually pretty hard to get to if you don’t go by car, we had no idea of that at first. Things didn’t go quite as planned for us, but we luckily found a taxi when we were lost somewhere in Toulouse searching for the place where we were staying for the night. He was already off duty, so it was extremely nice of him to take us all the way to the venue.

After all the hassle we finally got in when Marit Larsen was playing her set, and got close enough to see facial expressions and all. This time Jason opened full band with Make It Mine. I was glad how different the setlist was compared to the Olympia show. It had lots of songs from the Mr. A-Z album that I really like. This time the connection between the band and the audience wasn’t that good, except momentarily. I got the feeling that most people didn’t know English very well. Jason didn’t speak quite as much French as he did at the other show. Instead, he spoke some Italian and Spanish!

The best part was again the hit songs along with some crazy sing-alongs. And what I liked the most was Jason’s solo performance of The Boy’s Gone, a song from his first studio album Waiting for My Rocket to Come. Most people didn’t know it, but at least they were quiet and seemed to enjoy it. These lines hit me for the first time and fit so well with the traveling:

Be so happy with the way you are
Be so happy that you made it this far
Go on be happy now. Please be happy now
Because this is something else
this is something else

Here’s the setlist for the Olympia show:

1. The Longest Day of the Year
2. The Dynamo of Volition
3. Make It Mine
4. Common Pleasure
5. Love for a Child
6. Unfold
7. Lucky (with Marit Larsen)
8. Live High
9. Bella Luna
10. A Beautiful Mess
11. I’m yours
12. Mr Curiosity
13. The Remedy
14. No stopping Us
15. Butterfly
16. Song for a Friend

Thanks to Dirk-Jan for the setlist and some of the videos linked above. I don’t have the setlist for Le Bikini show, but I’d say roughly over half of the songs were same, the order being completely different.

So, once again a fantastic experience of traveling and seeing shows. It was great to see all the people and places, as well as two awesome shows. A big thank you to everyone who made my trip so good in a way or another!

Update: The setlist for the Toulouse show as well as many others can be found here.